Tuesday March 18, 2025

The quiet town of Gray Hawk, Kentucky had one stoplight in the entire county. Nobody locked their doors. Everyone knew everyone. It was here that Edwin and Bessie Morris built their life, running the local grocery store, post office, and gas station. Their grandson Mark Morris remembers them as pillars of the community – hardworking people who helped neighbors who couldn’t afford groceries and kept “cold cash” hidden in styrofoam cups in the freezer.

When Mark’s father made his routine morning check-in on his parents in June 1985, he discovered a scene of unimaginable horror. Both Edwin and Bessie had been bound, brutally beaten, and murdered in their own home. The first double homicide in Jackson County history shattered not just a family, but an entire way of life.

What makes this story particularly heartbreaking is how the killers gained entry – by simply knocking and asking for help, claiming they’d run out of gas. The very kindness that defined Edwin and Bessie led to their deaths. Even more shocking was the eventual revelation that one of the perpetrators was the son of Edwin’s best friend.

For Mark’s father, the trauma never faded. Until his death in 2002, he relived finding his parents’ bodies every night in his dreams. Now, approaching the 40th anniversary of the murders with appeals still working through the system, the Morris family continues their fight for justice.

Through Mark’s powerful firsthand account, we examine how this brutal crime forever changed multiple generations of a family, the painful realities of a justice system that moves at a glacial pace, and the resilience of those determined to ensure Edwin and Bessie Morris are never forgotten.

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Transcript

Mark MorrisGuest00:01

My dad was 32 at the time and he was the one on that Monday morning walked in and found them. So he came in to check to see how they were hanging them on and when he opened the door he could see my grandfather’s feet in the kitchen. So you think about a guy that’s 32 years old, that’s never lived more than a block away from his parents, walks in and finds them both brutally, savagely murdered. You can take a picture of him the day before and then a picture probably two weeks later, and you never know it’s the same person.

Wendy LyonsHost00:36

Warning the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Murdered in their Home the Brutal Killing of Edwin and Bessie Morris. Part 1 of 3. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. I’m Wendy and we have here with us today Mark Morris. Mark, how are you doing?

Mark MorrisGuest01:19

sir, good, how are y’all doing?

Wendy LyonsHost01:20

We’re doing good. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mark MorrisGuest01:22

Thanks for having me Appreciate it, David. How are?

David LyonsHost01:23

you Doing good really, but we’ve you so much for joining us.

Wendy LyonsHost01:25

Thanks for having me Appreciate it David.

David LyonsHost01:25

How are you Doing good Really? But we’ve been wanting to sit down with Mark for quite some time, quite some time.

Wendy LyonsHost01:30

A couple of years, I think. A couple of years We’ve been talking about this.

David LyonsHost01:42

It just takes a while to get everybody’s schedules together and for the people that don’t have houses cut loose when the storm hits. We’ll leave it at that. And good food, the best food on the marina, I’m not going to name the name. There you go. If you’re local, you know what we’re talking about. No-transcript families have been through, so, uh, welcome, we’re really excited about thank you so much.

02:17

It’s an honor to be here yeah, I think it’s an important story to tell from front to back. There’s a lot of dynamics that I think that the people that listen to this show or watch this show are going to find interesting. For sure, a lot of questions they’ll have in the end too.

Wendy LyonsHost02:31

So, mark, let’s just open. Obviously, we’re here to talk about the murder of your grandparents, edwin and Bessie Morris, and they were murdered in June of 1985, june 15, 16, up for debate. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your grandparents?

Mark MorrisGuest02:46

Sure, I always joke with people when they talk about where you’re from. And you know, in Kentucky we always say counties. We never say the actual town that we’re from. So it’s Jackson County, a little town called Greyhawk. And what was cool about our community growing up, you never had to worry about locking doors. You never had to worry about doors. You never had to worry about you know, your neighbors or anything.

03:07

Everybody took care of each other, watched out for each other and our grandparents, uh, in that area were kind of like the community center. We had a grocery store, we had the local post office and we had a gas station. So everything kind of in grayhawk, that’s about all there was. So there wasn’t a whole lot to do. So everybody kind of in Greyhawk, that’s about all there was, so there wasn’t a whole lot to do. So everybody kind of knew, everybody kept stuff with everybody and you know they were kind of pillars of the community and at the time when the murder happened it was the first double murder in the history of Jackson County.

03:36

So it has a lot of stuff into that way and then as we dig into it there’ll be some stuff that comes up that kind of makes you question is that type of way. We always say we should go back and live in the good old days. Well, that was the good old days where you didn’t have to worry about stuff and your neighbors took care of things, and that world changed drastically that night. I mean, it made a big difference in our lives and all the families that it affected.

Wendy LyonsHost04:00

And the community, since they were so well known.

Mark MorrisGuest04:02

Most definitely, most definitely. I was 16 at the time. It was my first, probably, dose of reality. You know, I thought that was the world and then, when the news got involved and everything gets involved, you find out there’s a whole nother world out there. That’s not as, maybe, as as dreamy as you think it is. There’s stuff that happens in the real world and then when you go on in life you meet people that had that and worse happened and you think, well, it only happened to me.

04:28

No, it’s happened a lot and it’s it’s time. One of the reasons I wanted to do this is to make sure that we keep it current. You know, we’re going on this year be 40 years since it happened, uh, that they’ve been on death row, and we’ll get into it. But for pillars of a community that always try to help people out, if you didn’t have the money for the groceries, we’d always make sure we’d take care of it.

04:50

They would If you needed a little extra gas or whatever. That’s the type of people they were that would want to help anyone because they came from nothing. We weren’t rich, they didn’t have a whole lot of money, but they worked hard for their stuff and they wanted to make sure that they were happy to do. Happy to share with people who needed it. The good Lord says you know, if you give to others, he’ll give on to you, and that was their model. They wanted to live by.

David LyonsHost05:12

I think that’s what’s important that we’ll find on this is that we’ve worked and will continue to work on some unsolved cases where people wait and they wait decades and they don’t have it. And People wait and they wait decades and they don’t have it. And in this case it’s solved. But as far as what we would probably want to agree, the real justice on this we’re going to find out in a little while is taking decades.

05:33

It’s still taking decades, and so it makes it so much harder for a family, I think, to metabolize and get through that and the disappointments that that brings, the disappointments that that brings. What do you know about Bessie and Edwin when they were, how they came up and where they came from? Do you know about when they were young?

Mark MorrisGuest05:52

Sure, they both came up there in Jackson County. They were raised basically what we used to call mom’s house, which is just up the hill from there Poor, hardworking families, farmers. It always worked hard for their stuff. We always joked with the granny it’s papa and granny’s how we always call them on granny uh, granny was a little bit older so we always said she hand-picked papa to be the one.

06:16

She got her a younger man and she got her a younger man and what was funny about it, from the time they were together they never spent more than a day apart. Wow, uh, even up until death. And the only time that they were apart in death and again that’ll come further is when we had taken from the funeral home to the graveyard. That was the only time they went side by side as everything went on. So it’s, uh, it’s, a true love story. Through hardships, I mean, they went through the depression, they went through.

06:46

My grandfather had multiple heart attacks and strokes. He was a little bigger man. My grandmother we talked a little bit earlier had cancer. She lost an eye to cancer. So they had been through quite a bit. There were four kids. One of them, the daughter, was in a car wreck, was in a coma for over a month, came out. It was okay. But I mean it wasn’t a family that didn’t have tragedy. We’d had another grocery store in addition to where we were that had burnt down prior, several years prior, and they got over that loss and rebuilt and you know, was having a good life together, getting to enjoy the fruits of their labor a little bit and still relatively young.

07:25

How old were they when they were? 68 and 65 when they passed, when they passed away?

Wendy LyonsHost07:28

and then they were they were 20 and 17 so that’s still young 68 and 65 by you know, living their life.

Mark MorrisGuest07:35

Yeah, they were, you know, even though they’d had a lot of health problems, they were still getting around. Yeah, uh, papa used a cane, but he could still get up and get around and do stuff. And my grandmother, she had a lot of health problems, they were still getting around. Yeah, papa used a cane, but he could still get up and get around and do stuff. And my grandmother, she had a green thumb. In the house that they built for themselves where the murder took place there was a sunroom, and that sunroom is where they always stayed. It was full of flowers and just she could touch anything and make it grow. It was, that was her thing.

Wendy LyonsHost08:07

Wow anything and make it grow? It was, that was her thing. Wow, did you uh growing up?

Mark MorrisGuest08:09

I guess you lived nearby them, so you probably spent a lot of time, a lot of time we had, uh, if you think of a neighborhood, we didn’t have a neighborhood. We had a, a store and in their house was part of the parking lot, so their driveway was a parking lot to the store, and then we lived in the house right behind it. So we were within a baseball throw and not a very good pitcher. You could throw from one house to the other and until my dad was 32, he’d never live more than a block away from them.

Wendy LyonsHost08:35

So these were his parents.

Mark MorrisGuest08:41

Yeah, this was my dad’s parents, and so he always said he was a mama’s boy and he truly was. I mean, every morning he’d stop in and check on them on his way to work to see how they were doing, to make sure everything was okay. It was just. You know, that’s how family was. My uncle, my dad’s oldest brother, lived basically across the street from them, so we had everybody all kind of right there together. So it was a family that you know. Everybody kind of stayed together. I grew up with cousins. You know, in the city now you don’t really get that, but back then your cousins were, that was your playboy, that’s who you ran with, that’s who you hung out with well, and a lot of things.

Wendy LyonsHost09:17

You know. We’re here in kentucky. For those who don’t know, you know, and in growing up in those days, there’s always Sunday dinner.

Mark MorrisGuest09:25

I’m sure your granny was usually fried chicken green beans, corns, cornbread.

Wendy LyonsHost09:29

You’d go after church and you had the grannies straight after that, yes, and that was, I’m sure, a tradition for you all too, Sure was most definitely.

Mark MorrisGuest09:36

It was one of those. Everybody got together and it’s funny, it was always new in the sunroom. If the blinds were open, come on in, it was ready in the sunroom. If the blinds were open, come on in, it was ready. And then when you walked to the sunroom, there was the kitchen and she was usually cooking in the kitchen.

Wendy LyonsHost09:47

So we couldn’t wait to get in the kitchen to hang out there and see her and see her nibble on some of the food while she’s cooking. She’d always give us a little bit, not let us know. But that’s it. Get back and probably picture a sweet tea always that and lemonade.

Mark MorrisGuest10:00

we were big lemonade drinkers so she always made it fresh, but it was. That was to me the perfect life. Yeah, the perfect life.

David LyonsHost10:09

Well understand all that. How did the family dynamics change once your grandparents Sure, drastically.

Mark MorrisGuest10:17

My dad was 32 at the time and he was the one on that Monday morning walked in and found them. So he came in to check to see how they were hanging them on and when he opened the door he could see my grandfather’s feet in the kitchen. So you think about a guy that’s 32 years old, that’s never lived more than a block away from his parents, walks in and finds them both brutally, savagely murdered. You can take a picture of him the day before and then a picture probably two weeks later and you never know it’s the same person. We ended up moving to another county, madison County, which is a connecting county from there, but he was never the same again, which affected my family. We’ll go with that first with my family. We’ll go with that first with my mother.

11:06

She had to deal with a guy that was basically dead. I mean he wanted to die. That’s all you heard him talk about. I want to die, I don’t want to be here, but he still tried to do stuff. It was a great dad. I mean I don’t want to say that I had a younger sister. She was young enough. She didn’t really know what was going on. I had just got saved in February of that year. So my world was kind of rocked because I thought, man, I got saved, everything’s supposed to be good, life’s good. And then you know, the murder happened. I see my dad falling apart. We moved to another county. I’m in school, so now I’m going to a different school, and it was just a big dose of reality, of change At 16. At 16.

Wendy LyonsHost11:50

That’s a lot for anybody, but at 16.

Mark MorrisGuest11:53

Yeah, and then. So my uncle, which is the oldest, and again we’ll get more into it he actually heard he was outside using the bathroom Just went out to you know it was a pretty day. He heard what he thought was firecrackers and we found out that was the shots that had actually killed him. He’s had two kids. His youngest daughter was supposed to spend the night that night and about 8 o’clock, for God above, she decided she was going to go home or she would have been there that evening. A little bit of I don’t want to say survivor’s guilt, but I was wondering why for her? Because she was young, she was probably at that time seven eight I mean just young, young.

12:39

And then Bobby, which is my uncle, you know, I could have heard it, maybe I could have done something, or why wasn’t I there to?

12:47

stop it. You know, dad, well, I’m always there. You know why didn’t they call? And in the beginning we knew one of the people that did it. At the time we didn’t know that, so it was a lot of finger pointing, questioning. It did bring all of us closer. Good, if that’s, if that’s possible, because we had a common enemy, a common bond. We knew what everybody was going through. So it was hard. You had to lean on each other a little bit more, but then it made us a little bit harder too.

David LyonsHost13:22

I was going to say that I was nodding my head and said good, because death usually brings out the worst or the best in a family and there’s not a lot of in-between.

Wendy LyonsHost13:30

And.

David LyonsHost13:30

I think we’ve all experienced both sides of that, so that’s probably a good thing, that too. So I guess in your family do that do you all talk about the crime, especially because we’re going to toward the end of the podcast, we’re going to talk about what’s not happening, but do you all talk about it.

Mark MorrisGuest13:47

Yeah, it’s not taboo. It’s mentioned on a regular basis. I have a son that’s that’s 30. He knows all about it, he knows the details, um, and, as we’ll get into, when you go through all the retrials and the court dates and all that stuff, it’s constantly brought up to you anyhow, but no, it’s something we still. The bad part is is that we’ve lost uh, one of my dad’s passed away, one of the brothers, uncle ronnie’s passed away, and we actually lost a great grandchild uh has passed away payton. So three of us never got to see the justice of actually see, and you know the one thing we’ve always talked about we’re going to keep fighting until we get to see it problem with the system is that when we talk about how long this stuff takes, is it actually denies that for people who had that interest in that too.

David LyonsHost14:41

So you were 16 when this happened. How did you learn about it and how was it described to you?

Mark MorrisGuest14:47

Sure what was interesting? That summer I came to Nicholasville. We were in Jessamine County, nicholasville. My mother’s parents lived up here and they owned a construction business. And that summer I thought, you know what? I’m going to go up there and work for them and learn a little bit about it. And they were building one of the factories here in town. Uh, and I went to work that morning. I remember it plain as day. It was listening to one of the radio stations and it was a call in name the four people on mount rushmore. And we were trying to hurry and call to get into it and I heard my grandfather up the phone, which would have been my mom’s dad, and he’s like, oh no. And I was like, did you not get through? Did you not get through? I’m still calling. I’m still calling.

15:27

He’s like you need to come here. And I was. And you could tell in his voice something was drastic and I’m like what it? And he says and you just sit down. I’m like, no, I’m good, you know what? What is it? Just tell me. And he’s like your grandparents have been murdered and I just kind of froze. I’m like huh. He said, come on, we got to get. He called his my grandmother, mommy. So we gotta get mommy, we’re headed, uh, we gotta get you down there. And I’m like, where’s dad, where’s mom? He said I don’t know all the details, we’ve got to get you there. That was the longest, probably 45 minutes hour, I don’t know. Hour and a half probably. Honestly, I don’t remember a whole lot of the drive up there because I don’t you know. They kept saying are you okay? Are you okay? What? What are you thinking?

Wendy LyonsHost16:15

and I don’t really think you just can’t process it like it can’t be real, yeah, real.

Mark MorrisGuest16:19

Yeah, I’m like we live in a town.

David LyonsHost16:21

The county’s got one stoplight in the whole county. That don’t happen there.

Mark MorrisGuest16:25

So it was just kind of like I don’t know I remember pulling up exactly what happened when I pulled up, who I saw, but you know, the first week probably at work.

David LyonsHost16:44

And then on that.

Wendy LyonsHost16:45

Mondayay there’ll be the second week. Starting that second week, you get the phone call and then your whole life is changed, changed from then. So when your dad went in and found them, I guess at first he saw he saw your, your grandpa’s feet. So you know, I don’t, maybe is he thinking he’s fallen or but then I guess the further he gets in he finds your grandmother.

Mark MorrisGuest17:01

Yeah, so basically what happened every morning he would stop. They had the like. I said at the time the grocery store was closed, he had the post office and the gas station and earlier we mentioned the blinds being closed. And he stopped in and seen Bobby and said, hey, have you seen Mom and him? And he’s like no, the blinds are closed. And he said that’s odd, maybe they’re not feeling good. Let me go check on them. So he walked over and he knocked on the glass door and the way it was, you walked into a sunroom and at the end of the sunroom was the step up into the kitchen, so you could kind of see into the kitchen.

17:33

Granny was always a little she’d get preoccupied and you could scare her. So when he knocked on the door he said Mommy, it’s me, don’t let me scare you. And he took about three steps in and that’s when he saw Papaw’s feet. He’d been gagged, tied bound, beat, pistol whipped and then shot. And he ran to him, got on top of him and he knew he was gone. But he said Daddy, they know. And he said All I can think of, where’s Mommy?

18:02

Well, it was a long hallway. You had the dining room, a living room, two spare bedrooms on the left, a bathroom and then the master bedroom was in the back. He goes running down the hall hollering for her and saw what nobody should ever have to see. She was bound, hand and feet behind her back, laid down on top of the bed, and was shot twice. The first one, we found out later, didn’t kill her. The second one did, but she always collected four-leaf clovers and put them in her Bible and they had asked her if they thought she was going to be lucky and if it would save her. When they shot and killed her, oh Lord, so that was so.

18:46

He don’t remember for sure how long he was underwitting, long, but he said God, I can’t let Bobby see. So he goes running out the sliding or the sunroom door Bobby, bobby, they’ve killed him. They’ve killed him, bobby, they’ve killed him. Bobby comes sunroom door. Bobby, bobby, they’ve killed him. They’ve killed him. Bobby, you got you, they’ve killed him. Bobby comes running and he was screaming so loud they couldn’t understand what he was, what dad was trying to say, and he kept holding him. And then some other people got him, you know, coming around, and nobody else got to go in. So he was the only one that saw it, but that was every night for the rest of his life. He died in 2002, so 17 years later he had that nightmare there’s not a night that he slept, that he didn’t relive that.

19:28

That does that five minutes of going in wow.

Wendy LyonsHost19:33

So when you arrived with your other grandparents, I guess did you go to their house, or?

Mark MorrisGuest19:38

so we pulled. Yeah, so basically we pulled. We went home, got my grandmother from my mother’s side. We drive there. As you come down the hill there’s probably one, two, a couple houses and it’s probably a half mile stretch. There’s people lined up both sides of the road. There’s probably 20 cop cars, there’s new stations across the roads full of hundreds of people and Greyhawk probably has 100, 120. At the time I think McKee had 400 people and they had to be. Everybody in the neighborhood had to be in the county, had to be there.

20:14

We pulled up in front of the post office and I went to open the door and dad just come running and he’s like Mark, they killed him, they killed him and I’m like who? And he’s like both of mommy and daddy’s gone. And then my mom came out. She was bawling, dad just kind of fell. So I was more worried about okay, how can I get? What can I do? And I’m like what happened? And he’s like I don’t know, they just they did it, they did it and then you had that’s when I found out about the reality of the news world. They were trying to get in for videos and pictures and I’m like, really I became probably a little bit of a problem child during that little bit, just because I might quit f and filming yeah, turn the cameras.

21:01

This is private, we don’t want you here, we don’t want this. And then it was trying to help other people that by that time my other aunt and uncles that showed up, um, and it was just kind of, we were all sitting in the garage. They’d locked the garage. We’re all sitting in the air. Uh, the corner locked the garage. We’re all sitting in there, the corner. A bunch of the detectives and police were all there and of course, they wanted to ask a bunch of questions and then all we were trying to do is figure out who, who and why. That was the, you know. We knew they were gone. So the next was who could it be? Why?

David LyonsHost21:33

Why did they do it? How did it happen that brutality, that?

Mark MorrisGuest21:37

yeah, and to take the time to to bind them up like that the one thing that was hardest for me, that christmas in 84 I’d bought back then boom boxes were big well, my grandparents, they wouldn’t boom box people, but I bought them, just it’ll be one speaker radio and the cord that they used to tie my grandpa up with was from that radio and it said in the kitchen, and they’d rip the cord out and tied them up and shoved the stocking down his throat and he had always told us you know, if you have any cash, I got some cold cash and we’re always papaw, you’re crazy, we don’t need anything.

22:13

Growing up in the depression he always had to keep a little bit on him, not enough to flaunt, but he dealt and used cars, guns, cars, whatever, so if he could trade he always wanted to have some cash. When we found out after this, he kept in styrofoam cups lots of money in the freezer and that was his cold cash he’d always tell us about and when they came in. I don’t know if we want to get into that part of it now, but he put up a fight. He tried to stop it but he just couldn’t quite get there.

Wendy LyonsHost22:42

So you all must have known that whoever did this had to know they had money. So it wasn’t a complete stranger just passing through.

Mark MorrisGuest22:49

It’s one of those that it sounds bad but everybody knew they had money, but not the arrogance of, like you see, some people nowadays.

David LyonsHost22:58

Flaunting cash. Yeah, it was like okay you know Ed and them.

Mark MorrisGuest23:01

If the bank says no, go to them, they’ll help you out. They didn’t flaunt it, he didn’t drive big fancy cars, he didn’t have fancy stuff. But between the stores and him doing it on cars and stuff, people knew there was money there. So it opened it up to where you thought you know it could be anybody, we don’t know. But then you’re up in the middle of nowhere. So you’re kind of like, well, how would anybody know to do that? So there was a lot, goes through your mind it does open doors.

David LyonsHost23:29

You know there’s an old saying find the motive and manage the case. Yeah, because in Kentucky you don’t have to prove what somebody’s motivation is, but it is what directs the case. So well, let’s go there. So, with this horrific thing and you’ve offered some details on it, and again I’m sorry that your family even had to go with something that awful the police arrive, they start looking at it. Take us down that road. Did you all have some suspicions at some point? Did the police have suspicions? Did the two come together and and and uh, how, like how long did it take from their death to when you all learned?

Mark MorrisGuest24:07

just take us through as much as you can. So a little bit of backstory too. My uncle, fred hayes, at the time was sheriff in jackson county and had been for a long time. Then I had a cousin, paul hayes, a state trooper that was in command of post out of London. So we had some insight to some of the stuff that was going on. But as far as who did it at the time we had no idea. You think of some people that may be in the county Well, that was a bad boy or that was a bad something, but would they go through this far? And because of the county, but that was a bad boy or that was a bad something. But would they go through this far? And because of the brutality. There was no sign of forced entry. We found out later what had happened. Well, basically, the goodness of their hearts is what killed them. They came to the door and said they ran out of gas. We let us come in. Sure, come inside. And that’s how they got in, because we knew one of them.

24:57

But going through it all, all that was probably the hardest part, because you, you know the police are constantly asking you what about this, what about this? And then every week you’re asking them. You got any leads? You know there were hardly no fingerprints. There was hardly anything left behind. The only thing that we know that was left behind was the lock to the back door. The sliding glass door was left outside, but it wasn’t found until about four o’clock the next day. So there’s no fingerprint. It was in the backyard but there’s no fingerprints because the sun was out that day, nothing was showing. So honestly, if it hadn’t been for their mistake in another murder, we may not have ever known. Wow, no, they actually came through the sunroom which is on the front.

25:43

Once they did the murder they ran out the back door. I got you. So there were three involved. One waited in the van to be the lookout, two went in because one knew my grandparents so he was going to help them get in, and then the muscle behind it went in with him. Then, after they did the killings, they ran out the back door and obviously the latch must have been locked on the back door. They ran out as it was running, carrying the money, jewelry, guns, and dropped it and then got in the car. And then they drove to London, got on 75, and actually took the guns apart, threw them into Laurel Lake as they were driving across the river.

Wendy LyonsHost26:22

What’s the purpose of taking the guns if you’re going to take them apart and throw them away?

Mark MorrisGuest26:25

The ones they used to murder.

Wendy LyonsHost26:27

Oh, the murder weapons.

Mark MorrisGuest26:29

Yeah, so the ones they used to murder, they wiped down, took them apart, threw them into the lake. They never were found. Those weapons were never found.

David LyonsHost26:36

So go back again now. I’m intrigued on what cracked the case, because you said that if it hadn’t been for making a mistake in another one, yeah, in another murder.

Wendy LyonsHost26:44

I was asking the same thing I was thinking was it before or after, and how did you know? So it was actually after.

Mark MorrisGuest26:49

In August of that year there was a big murder case that got a lot of attention statewide. A college, a big murder case that got a lot of attention statewide. Uh, a college student named Tammy Acker and her dad was Dr Acker in Letcher County, and these three monsters had came up with a plan. They basically went through all the money that they got from Papa and grannies, uh, and decided that, hey, that worked really good. We’ve heard this guy’s got a lot of money, we’re going to go get him. And they thought dr ecker would be home by himself. So they go to ledger county. They pose as fbi agents, tell them that they’re there to investigate a case. Um, the three, all three go in.

27:30

This time just happens to me the daughter’s there, who a UK student, which caught them by surprise. They torture, beat and thought they had killed both of them. They took Tammy to the back and she gave them everything that she knew was there. Dr Ecker had a safe, because that’s where he ran his doctor’s practice and everything from, and they got the combination of the safe. They said just don’t kill nobody, don’t kill nobody.

27:58

And Epperson and Hodge, which are the two that killed my grandparents Bonatib Bartley was the third, they said okay, we did the last one, you get to kill this one. So Hodge says I’ll go take care of the girl. He stabbed her so many times that the last time that he stabbed her, when she was on the ground, the knife went about three inches into the floor and it took two cops to get it out of it. Bartley starts choking dr acker just with the phone cord. The phone rings, it scares him, dr acker’s unconscious.

28:32

They take off running with three bags of money, which ended up being a couple million dollars, get into the car and take off. When Dr Acker wakes up after he finds his daughter, calls the police and as he started giving descriptions, then the ball started rolling. Luckily we had a real good detective. Luckily we had a real good detective. Once the description came, we didn’t know they’d murdered our grandparents but one of the names was Roger Dale Epperson. The Epperson name in our family meant a lot because my grandfather’s best friend was Eb Epperson, which he was honorary pauper at my grandfather’s funeral, and his son is the one that murdered my grandparents.

Wendy LyonsHost29:18

You’re kidding, hey. You know there’s more to this story, so go download the next episode, like the true crime fan that you are.

David LyonsHost29:26

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review. On Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts, make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends Lock it down Judy!

30:26

Judy.

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